By Stephen Downes
March 19, 2004
India Still Waits: Rural Poor Not Yet Ready
For the Promise of Radio
Frederick Noronha has
been covering India from the perspective of rural learning,
open source software and radio for some time now. In this
item, sent to me by email and posted on my website with his
permission, he examines the need of the rural poor for
community radio, and the halting steps toward that
objective. It's a great read, and I will be adding more of
his work to my website in the future. By Frederick Noronha,
Stephen's Web, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Software Agent Targets Chatroom
Paedophiles
Those of us who are old enough (and
geeky enough) remember Julia and other early 'chatbots',
computer programs that act like people in chat rooms. Or
try to act like people, at least. The next generation of
chatbots is here, powered by neural networks and given the
task of protecting the unwary from the unsafe. Judging from
the transcript in this message, they will be very difficult
to detect (though if they're online 24-7, that would be a
dead giveaway). One wonders, will the chatbots ever get
good enough to teach? More. Via Dave Green's NTK. By Duncan
Graham-Rowe, New Scientist, March 17, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
IA Summit 2004 Wrapup
Good
coverage (though at times frustratingly terse) of the
recent Information Architecture Summit. Day One and Day Two. Via elearningpost. I really
wanted to see the 'student data' diagram in more detail,
but it doesn't enlarge and doesn't seem to be on the
author's website. Still, the information in these two pages
is like a buffet: there's a lot of food, and it's quite
tasty, but you have to take what's there and there's nobody
to ask for special treats. I should point out, too, that
this conference coverage is one of the better examples of
group blogging I've seen. By Various Authors, Boxes and
Arrows, March 19, 2004 12:52 p.m.
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The "Weariness of the Flesh": Reflections on
the Life of the Mind in an Era of
Abundance
Thomas Davenport writes, "A
centralized highly engineered approach to this vast amount
of information is clearly untenable. Even the most
carefully maintained records are of no value unless they
are used. Information management strategies that make every
employee a records manager seem to be the only viable
alternative." This theme is nicely developed as the authors
look at the need for personal information management and
argue for organic, bottom up systems to accomplish this
task. By Paul B. Gandel, Richard N. Katz and Susan E.
Metros, EDUCAUSE Review, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
A University Is Not a Business (and Other
Fantasies)
I know a false dilemma when I see it,
and I see one in this article. One one horn of the dilemma,
a criticism of the university system I have been making for
a long time now: that it is essentially a cottage industry,
unable or unwilling to adapt to the growing needs of
students and society, resistant in so many ways to the
opportunities offered by technological change. On the other
horn of the dilemma, the proposition that the university
must be run as a business, consolodating and rationalizing,
attending to the bottom line, becoming customer centric,
and probably, doing away with tenure. The latter picture
looks attractive only because the former is so dismal. But
when one looks at the scandals of Enron and Worldcom, the
manipulations of Mircosoft, the feeble performances of
Nortel and Corel, to name just a few, the prospect of
running universities like a business seems like nothing
less than the short road to ruin for the educational
system. No, I think we must cling to what universities have
become: an essential public service, part of the social
infrastructure, and the beacon of hope for people not only
here but around the world. That does not obviate the need
for change, but it does dictate the direction in which
change must go, and it is not toward Wall Street. By Milton
Greenberg, EDUCAUSE Review, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Chaire de recherche du Canada en
e-formation
I don't report on job opportunities,
but this is a special circumstance. The Université de
Moncton, which is located across the road from us, has an
opening for a Canada Research Chair in e-learning. The
advertisement to which I link is in French, but so is the
position, so if you can't read the ad you probably
shouldn't apply for the position. That said, this is a good
opportunity, and you'd be working across the road from Seb
Paquet, myself, and the rest of the NRC e-learning group,
and alongside people from TeleEducation and the crack team at
Université de Moncton's IDITAE e-learning design centre. By Press
Release, Université de Moncton, March, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Chile Introduces Its Digital
Agenda
No English translation is available, so I
rely on the E-Media Tidbits summary: "In a long-awaited
step, the Chilean government this week introduced its
Digital Agenda. It's a 60-page book and website with 34
commitments for years 2004-2006, including directives about
promoting digital access, infrastructure, legislation, and
use of digital technologies in business. What about digital
content? There's a mention of state funding for 'quality
content' and a push for e-learning systems." By Various
Authors, Secretaría Técnica del Grupo de Acción Digital,
February, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Designing Effective Online Learning
Resources
Website version of PowerPoint slides
(which means it requires Internet Explorer, though I viewed
it with Firebird on Linux and it still mostly displayed).
The slides are essentially a case study of the design,
distribution and evlautaion of a learning object submitted
to CLOE. Via D'Arcy Norman. Much more information on the
same project is available on Krauss's weblog, available here. By Ferdinand Krauss,
March 19, 2004 7:13 a.m.
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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